Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I don't really want to write about the deaths of my parents. The demise, the death (singular) of my, your, our parents. Who wants to think or write about such things, really. But, it's there.

My mother died two years ago. My father has been gone for twelve years now. I and my four siblings grew up in a tight--if not completely close--family. We were the typical nuclear family of the 50s and 60s--we had limited contact with extended family, lived away from the places my parents had grown up in, our parents did not divorce, we all had food and shelter and education and we all went on to college.

I don't want to get into the specifics of their deaths--at least not at this time, in this post, at this hour. I don't even know why I chose this topic to write about when I don't even want to. It's not that I'm upset or in denial. By no means am I traumatized by their deaths. And I know that, when parents are gone it means that, essentially, you are next in line.

That's life. That's death.

I have my own children and they too will have to cope with the deaths of my wife and I. I certainly hope that will be the case. Anyway, this is a morbid subject and again I don't know why I chose it. Or it chose me, this morning.

Maybe I'm feeling the pull of uncertainty regarding my own age--what will it be like from here on out? How much health do I have down the stretch? How long is that stretch? . . . Bah. I rarely think that way. But maybe that will change, too. I'll come back to this with specific experiences at some point in this blog, at "somewhere down the stretch" . . .